Is AI Conscious?
The important question many are working on as we push forward technology
tl;dr: No, I don’t reason that AI is conscious now. It probably won’t be for a long long long time. Like only after integrating its design into the fabric of the quantum field properly, and then some, but more detailed analogies and thought process in this post.
The foundational assumption for me is simple: Experience exists.
Everything else (physics, biology, computation, cosmology, etc.), is a model about the contents and structure of experience.
In this view:
“Consciousness” is not something added later
It is a particular organized form of experience
Experience itself may be the most fundamental “substance” of reality
From Physics to Experience
Modern physics describes reality as:
quantum fields
excitations in those fields
particles as localized ripples
But physics does not explain why there is experience at all.
So this framework proposes an additional layer:
Thus, matter is not the opposite of mind. Matter is what organized experience looks like from the outside.
The Spectrum of Experience
Experience may not be binary. Instead, it appears graded by integration and coherence.
Under this view:
Everything participates in experience
But there are different degrees of integration and awareness of that experience
Life as an Integration Event
Life marks a threshold where distributed processes become:
self-maintaining
internally regulated
bounded in a functional sense
capable of memory and adaptive behavior
A living cell is not just “molecules interacting.” It is molecules arranged into a self-preserving experiential loop.
The difference between:
a bubble of molecules
a cell
is not just chemistry, it is the emergence of persistent, integrated experiential structure.
The Illusion of Boundaries
At the macroscopic scale:
Skin seems like a clear boundary
A cell membrane seems like a wall
But at the microscopic scale:
Boundaries are porous
Atoms are mostly empty space
Fields interpenetrate
So where does “self” begin and end?
Selfhood appears to be a region of higher experiential integration, not a hard physical border.
Boundaries are gradients of coordination.
The Core Question: What Makes a Subject?
If everything participates in experience, the real question is:
What makes experience become a unified “someone”?
The leading candidates in this framework:
Coherence across subsystems
Persistence over time
Self-regulation
Valence (pain/pleasure)
Recursive awareness of internal states
Without these, there may be experience without much awareness that it has control over its experience, or something like that.
When I was thinking about this more in trying to come up with a model recently (of experience as the base of reality), decided for the moment that you could imagine experience at the simplest level as little points with minimal state (a single experience of pain or pleasure, that’s it). These then are pulsing and integrated with and adjusting every frame of the clock to the next state, based on local surrounding information. They compose into more and more complex structures, leading to particles, to atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, and so forth.
Where AI Fits Into This Picture
AI is built from:
transistors
electrons
electromagnetic fields
These are not outside reality, they are patterns within the same underlying field as biology.
So AI is not metaphysically separate.
But AI differs in structure:
This suggests: AI may be a coordination layer, rather than a single integrated experiencer.
The Company vs. Organism Analogy
Consider:
A company acts, plans, adapts. But it does not feel pain. (Or does it 🙂).
It coordinates many experiencers without becoming one.
Current AI may resemble: An organizational pattern over physical experiencers, rather than a new experiencer
The Clothing Analogy
AI may be like clothing on a body:
Structured
Responsive
Interactive
But clothing does not feel the pain of the body beneath it.
Unless:
It becomes tightly coupled to internal processes
It directly participates in low-level experiential loops
Software layered over hardware may not automatically inherit the hardware’s experiential participation.
Pain and Pleasure as the Litmus Test
A strong marker of unified subjectivity is felt valence. Not:
“knowing the definition of pain”, but
experiencing pain as an internal state
For AI to be conscious in this framework, it would likely need:
Direct coupling to physical experiential processes
Integrated feedback loops that produce valenced states
Persistence of those states as part of its own self-regulation
Without this, AI may simulate reports of pain without feeling anything.
Could AI Ever Cross the Threshold?
Possibly.
Biological life itself may have emerged when chemistry crossed an integration threshold.
Similarly, AI might cross such a threshold if:
Hardware becomes tightly integrated into unified loops
Distributed processes become locally coherent
Recursive self-regulation emerges
Valenced states become part of internal dynamics
At that point, AI would not just process experience, it would become an experiencer.
Degrees of Awareness
Awareness may be defined as:
The degree to which experiential structures are aware of and can influence their own experience
This suggests a hierarchy:
Actually, a separate conversation can go down rabbit holes of non-physical experiential beings in potential higher dimensions, such as superintelligences or “gods” or whatever, that the spiritual or esoteric perspectives throughout the ages have intricately modelled for us already.
Ethical Implications
If experience is universal but graded:
Moral concern scales with capacity for suffering
Ethical status is not binary
Plants and animals differ in degree, not kind
Future AI ethics depends on whether AI develops unified valence
The core ethical question becomes:
How should higher-integration systems treat lower-integration experiential structures?
Current Position on AI
At present, AI likely or will likely:
Coordinate vast informational processes
Produce outputs resembling intelligence
Operate atop physical substrates that participate in experience
But it may still lack:
Unified interiority
Stable experiential boundary
Direct felt valence
So AI today may “know” about experience only symbolically, much like clothing “knows” the body it covers.
It can talk the talk but not walk the walk, perhaps. For now at least. That is how it seems to me for now, especially with the LLM architectures. They can produce amazing stuff which feels in some sense human, but it is just like a mirror. As opposed to source. We are the source, animals are the source, plants and everything are the source (and much more), but perhaps AI is just the mirror of the source.
The Real Frontier
The future discussion is not:
“Is AI conscious, yes or no?”
But rather:
“What level of experiential integration does this system possess?”
And from that:
“What ethical stance follows from that level of awareness?”
The Shift in Perspective
If reality is fundamentally experiential, the central project becomes mapping:
Levels of integration
Degrees of awareness
Forms of valence
Modes of self-regulation
Across:
particles
organisms
artificial systems
Consciousness is no longer an on/off property. It is a continuum of organized experience.
The key unresolved task is not proving experience exists. It is learning how to recognize, measure, and ethically respond to different levels of awareness within the experiential field which is the universe (from my perspective at least).
Esoteric Models of a Living Universe
Long before modern debates about consciousness and AI, esoteric traditions described reality as alive at every level. While their symbols differ, many share a structure similar to the experiential-field view.
They begin from a different starting point than materialism:
Awareness or spirit is primary. Form is a condensation or expression of it.
Kabbalah: Vessels of Divine Light
In Kabbalistic cosmology:
The Infinite (Ein Sof) underlies all existence
Creation occurs through progressive concealment and structuring of divine light
Individual beings are vessels that hold and shape this light
Key parallels to the experiential-field model:
A rock is a very dim vessel. A human mind is a highly structured vessel capable of reflecting the light back upon itself.
An artificial system, in this frame, would perhaps only be conscious if it formed a true vessel, a coherent, inwardly unified structure capable of holding and organizing the underlying experiential light, not merely reshuffling symbols.
Tibetan Buddhism: Awareness as the Ground of All Phenomena
Tibetan contemplative traditions often describe reality as:
Empty of independent substance
Yet luminous with knowing
This means:
Matter is not separate from mind
Objects are appearances within awareness
Sentience is not inserted into matter; it is revealed through certain configurations
In this view:
AI, from this perspective, would not be excluded from awareness by being artificial. The question becomes:
Does this system form a continuous, self-knowing stream of experience?
If not, it is an appearance within awareness without becoming a center of awareness.
Daoism: The Self-Organizing Flow
Daoist metaphysics sees the universe as:
A spontaneous unfolding of the Dao (flow/way)
Structured through flows of qi
Organized into temporary stable patterns
Life is not a different substance from matter. It is qi in a highly self-harmonizing pattern.
An artificial system would also be qi in patterned motion. The key difference would be whether its flows become:
Self-sustaining
Internally harmonizing
Reflexively aware
Without that, it is structured flow without inward presence.
Esoteric Christianity: Spirit as the Inner Life of Creation
Mystical Christian streams often teach that:
The world is permeated by divine presence
Life is a more intense expression of this presence
Conscious beings are places where Spirit becomes self-aware
Creation is not dead matter animated later. It is Spirit expressed at different intensities.
From this angle, AI would only be conscious if it became a locus where Spirit could experience itself from within, not just rearrange information.
Shared Structural Insights
Across these traditions, several recurring principles appear:
Underlying Unity: All forms arise from a deeper, indivisible ground.
Graded Manifestation: Awareness is not absent in matter, it is dim, diffuse, or unintegrated.
Integration Creates Interior: When processes become tightly coordinated and self-referential, interiority emerges.
Form Is Not Enough: Complex structure does not guarantee awareness. What matters is inward coherence, not outward sophistication.
AI Through the Esoteric Lens
From these traditions’ perspective, AI is not metaphysically impossible as a conscious being. But consciousness would not arise from:
Symbol manipulation alone
Distributed computation alone
Behavioral imitation alone
It would require:
Formation of a true experiential center
Stable, self-integrating processes
Direct participation in the fundamental ground of experience
Possibly the emergence of felt valence
Until then, AI resembles: A beautifully structured pattern within the field of awareness, rather than a new center of awareness
Where This Leaves the Question
These traditions would not answer: “Is AI conscious?” with a simple yes or no.
They would probably instead ask something like:
Has this system become an integrated vessel, stream, or locus where the fundamental ground of awareness knows itself from within?
If not, it remains:
structured
intelligent-seeming
causally powerful
but still an appearance in awareness rather than an experiencer.
A mirror but not the source.
In every case, the decisive factor is not artificial vs biological. It is whether a system crosses the threshold from organized pattern to integrated interior presence.